Our Own Metaphor [Paperback]

Mary Catherine Bateson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian; 2nd edition (October 17, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560980702
• ISBN-13: 978-1560980704
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,542,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mary Catherine Bateson is a writer and cultural anthropologist. She has retired from teaching but continues as a visiting scholar at Boston College's Center on Aging and Work. She was educated at Radcliffe (BA 1960) and Harvard (PhD 1963). She was Dean of the Faculty at Amherst College 1980-83. From 1987 to 2002, Bateson was Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University, becoming Professor Emerita in 2002. She has also taught at Harvard, Northeastern, Amherst, and Spelman College, as well as overseas in the Philippines and Iran.

Bateson's original research interest was in the Middle East. More recently she has been interested in how women and men work out distinctive adaptations to culture change, learning from those around them and improvising new ways of being. She is currently exploring how extended longevity and lifelong learning modify the rhythms of the life cycle and the interaction between generations.

Her books include:, With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson; Composing a Life; Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way; Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition; and Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery; and Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom, September 2010.

Bateson is married and has a married daughter and two grandsons. She lives in Southern New Hampshire.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Groundbreaking Work, May 17, 2010

By 

Jack Burke (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Own Metaphor: A Personal Account of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity & the Human Sciences) (Paperback)

I haven't read this book for 20 plus years, but i just ordered a copy. This is an excellent, deep book that explains the underpinnings of much of current thought regarding man's relationship to ideas, and to the world around us. This book is a report on a seminal conference on cybernetics.